Outer Space Facebook
by Abstruse fangirl
Summary: The Doctor & Martha hop onto Facebook for a game of intergalactic Scrabble.


**(Disclaimer: All of Doctor Who belongs to ever awesome BBC; I just play with the characters every once in a while.)**

Letter by the letter the word formed itself on his screen. Small square blocks lined themselves up in formation like soldiers on a battlefield, coming together to form the one word he'd neglected to magic into existence during this grueling battle of the wills.

T-E-M-P-O-R-A-L

The Doctor's mouth was agape.

He leaned his elbows on the console, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with his left hand and stared at the monitor in front of him. An animation flashed across his screen.

Final Score:

_Martha Jones_ 234

_The_Doctor_ 232

_This_ was not fair.

'_Would you care to play again?'_ the application asked cheerily.

No, he would not.

He had been so sure that he had spelled that last word correctly. He'd looked it over about a dozen times before dragging the letters onto the board. But no matter where he placed them, or which way he started it, the game rejected it. He'd tried and tried until the words "time's up!" had flashed across the screen in front of him.

G-R-A-V-I-T-I-C

Silly humans and their limited, mundane understanding of the universe.

His fingers became a blur, flying across the keyboard to spell out in Royal Blue Comic Sans exactly how displeased he was with the outcome of today's match.

"I assure you Martha Jones, _gravitic_ is in fact a word. And not just that, it's a _part_, as in a part of the TARDIS. The Gravitic Anomaliser is an integral part of the vortex navigational system on any decent temporal vessel, let alone something as sophisticated as—"

He stopped typing when he saw the words _Martha Jones is typing a message_ appear at the bottom of the messenger window. He stood there for a moment, rocking back and forth on his heels, waiting for the words to transmit themselves from a sleepy little street in East London to the depths of the Time Vortex.

"Doctor, you can't possibly expect for Hasbro to understand the inner workings of a ship that can travel in both time and space."

Damn. She had him there.

He started to send a scathing reply questioning just what linguistic authority Hasbro used to determine what was and was not in fact a 'real word' when he saw the words _Martha Jones is typing a message _ appear again at the bottom of his screen.

"Besides, I'm not saying that 'Gravitic' isn't a word; I'm just saying that we humans here on 21st century Earth haven't discovered it yet. But temporal is most certainly a word. You know, _temporal_, as in the temporal anomaly that UNIT's been monitoring? The one on the data disc that you've been reviewing for the past several hours?"

Martha punctuated her statement with an icon of an exasperated looking smiley drumming its fingers impatiently.

The Doctor stepped back from the screen and scratched the back of his head.

Data disc? What Data Disc? When had she given him a Data –

Oh.

"That's right!" he said slapping his forehead. "I was supposed to analyze that data and get the analysis back to Martha so that she could inform her superiors at UNIT about any possible danger associated with the sudden spikes in temporal activity."

He walked back to the TARDIS console and tapped out a message furiously, hit "enter" and stared at the screen, waiting for a response.

"Blimey, Martha! How long have we been playing Scrabble?"

"About three hours I'd say."

"Three hours?? Why ever would you let me go on playing this ridiculous game for that long? Especially when the very future of all mankind could be hanging by a thread?"

It took no more than a couple of seconds for the reply to pop up on his screen.

"Because I was winning."

The Doctor was fairly certain that the toothy grin on the line following her last statement bore more than a passing resemblance to the one Martha surely had while typing it.

"Well, if the Earth spontaneously combusts into a great big ball of temporally fueled flames, don't come crying to me."

Martha Jones was typing again.

First, a smiley appeared who seemed to be…

"Martha, is that smiley of yours sighing or yawning? Young lady, am I keeping you up past your bedtime?"

"It was a sigh, Doctor. A heavy, heavy sigh. Just take a look at that data I gave you, yeah? I'm sure if the Earth spontaneously combusts, you'll be the first to know. At least I'll die happy knowing that I beat the Last of the Time Lords three times straight at that – what was it you called it? Oh yes! 'Archaic and quaint, antiquated game for children.'"

The Doctor felt the color rise in his cheeks as he read the words appearing on his screen line by line. Perhaps he'd been a bit crass in his initial assessment of Martha's skill as a wordsmith.

But if a game didn't allow for species (proper nouns), planetary systems (proper nouns composed of multiple words), or the name of that diabolical deviant he'd overthrown while on holiday with Jack in the Bertreen system (_very_ proper noun), then how was he supposed to win?

"You know Doctor, winning isn't everything."

The Doctor snorted as he rifled through his pockets in search of the high capacity disc Martha had provided him earlier that day.

No, winning wasn't everything. It was the only thing.

Beaten at Scrabble by a human who, if he were honest, had wiped the proverbial floor with him. He could see the Facebook status update from Martha now. How ever was he going to live this down?

He reached into his left jacket pocket until he felt something on the lower right that felt rather like a smallish CD. He took it out and popped it into the slot on the TARDIS console. With a few swift keystrokes, he began to copy the data on the disc to the TARDIS main computer.

"I know Martha…Anyway, I found the disc. I should be able to let you know more about these spikes in a jiff."

"Sounds good to me. Well, I'm going to grab a midnight snack. TTYL, Doctor."

_Martha Jones has signed off._

The Doctor clicked the X in the message window, and then the X in the tab containing the Online Dictionary he'd been using throughout the last game of Scrabble (not that it'd been any help). He was about to close the tab containing the Scrabble game when an idea struck him. He moved the cursor from the 'X' in the corner of the tab to the words 'Martha Jones.'

It took a few moments for the page to load. Well wishes and jokes were interspersed with ridiculous quiz results ("You are Cheer Bear! You cheer up everyone you meet!") and strange presents ('Tish Jones has given you a bag of Jamon Crisps'), even stranger presents ('Mickey Smith has given you blue suede shoes'), and gifts so bizarre that he chose to believe that they hadn't been given at all ('Jack Harkness has given you a vibrating thong!').

The Doctor made a virtual bee line for the white space at the top of the page preceded by the simple question 'What's on your mind?'

He paused for a moment to check on the progress the TARDIS computer banks were making in their analysis of the data he'd uploaded before returning to the blank box. He knew he probably should be paying more attention to the analysis as it ran, or doing research on recent temporal spikes in the U.K.

But he found that his mind was only able to center in on one thing. With a smirk, he typed up a quick message, looked it over, and clicked "Share."

The words popped up on Martha's Facebook Wall next to a picture of him holding a Sonic Screwdriver and looking rather dashing.

"As the analysis of the information you gave me is nearly complete, I was wondering as to whether you would be interested in perhaps extending my original challenge to a best of ten face-off?"

Within moments he saw a blue line flashing in the bottom right-hand corner of his screen.

Martha Jones had typed a message.

"Alright Doctor; you're on!"

The Doctor rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms out in front of him, and cracked his knuckles.

Let the games begin.


End file.
